OSI Group Has A Larger Product Inventory Now With Baho Food Now In Their Portfolio

As one of the world’s top burger suppliers and chicken product innovators, OSI Group is always testing out how their meats and special dishes will resonate with customers. Now they’ll have even more new products to distribute throughout their networks with their acquisition of Baho Food. Baho Food has been in Europe’s meat market for several years and was going through some troubled times, but when OSI Group offered to buy them out they were told their company’s name would stay as would their current staff. Plus OSI will be giving them additional funding for marketing and delivering products to even more customers. John Balvers, managing director of Baho Food has expressed his deep approval of the deal and will be working closely with OSI President David McDonald.

OSI Group is a close partner of McDonald’s, a relationship they’ve had for more than 60 years. Other restaurants they’ve supplied meats for include KFC, Subway and Pizza Hut. But even before OSI was shipping their meats around the world to various restaurants and supermarkets, they were selling them to customers in the Chicago area as a family-owned butcher shop and meat market. Their founder was Otto Kolschowsky, and their original name was Otto & Sons. It became a big market center in the late 1920s, and their partnership with McDonald’s was made when then McDonald’s owner Ray Kroc shook hands with the Kolschowskys in 1955. It was McDonald’s plan to become a global corporation that led to the increased demand on Otto & Sons to also grow.

Otto & Sons first big high-powered machinery plant was built in Geneva, IL back in the late 1950s, and the next was built in Iowa. Around 1975, Otto & Sons started laying the plans to open more plants in Europe and South America, and that’s also when they changed their name to OSI Group. Their international locations include a Brazilian office, a joint venture in Canada with Select Ready Foods, OSI Europe which now includes Baho Food, a Toledo, Spain plant, offices in India and China, and GenOSI in the Philippines. OSI has not only put out thousands of tons in meats at their plants, they’ve also worked hard to make sure employees don’t suffer the kind of injuries that often come with the job. The safety guidelines they’ve upheld at their factories have been praised by several safety authorities, one of which is the British Safety Council who gave them the prestigious Globe of Honour award.